Route MapIpoh, Malaysia »
September 02, 2010
Ipoh is a city between Kuala Lumpur and Butterworth. It is on the West Coast. What a difference - the East Coast is Muslim, here Chinese dominate the population. No Ramadan!
I went to McDonald's at 9 am and voila - open! They were opening at noon in Kuala Besut, and 3 pm in Kota Bahru. The demographic map of Malaysia is like this: East Coast Muslim, and the more North you go the more Muslim it becomes,
and the West Coast is Chinese, more Chinese the further North you go. Hindu are everywhere, but again, more in the North West than elsewhere. Kuala Lumpur is mixed, and also the center
of Malaysia seems to be Chinese dominant, although again, you can see the dark skinned Indians everywhere. Their specialty is restaurants.

I came to Ipoh on the first of September. There are no tourists here. The reason for this is that there is no airport here. Which is good - I was able to experience an authentic Malaysian city. Food is good here and cheap. They also have something a visitor to Malaysia shouldn't miss - the Chinese Buddhist cave temples.

The temples are full of sculptures, paintings and figurines from Chinese mythology. Dragons, warriors, and of course Buddha. They remind me a bit of what I have seen in Singapore.
They are somewhat tacky, but they fit the colorful style of Chinese temples.
The temples are located on the outskirts of town. I was lucky, again, to get a ride. I asked some Chinese older lady about the bus. She didn't speak English, just very little,
but she said that she goes to the same area and told me to hop in in the car when her husband showed up to pick her up. He was very skinny and had a long beard - like the one you see
in the old Chinese scroll paintings. I knew it was a sign.

So, I ended up being delivered to the caves. There are a few of them, the largest called Sam Poh Tong. All these caves have a main chamber, and then there are passages to other
ares, stairs to smaller chambers two, three or more levels above. Great exercise running up and down!

I really enjoyed these caves. Sweaty from climbing the stairs, I sat for a while inside the Sam Poh Tong temple. There was a passage with a really refreshing breeze of cool air.
It was great! After seeing Mosques every day, listening to prayers blasting from speakers a few times a day (and at night),
the whole experience visiting these temples was really refreshing. For everyone traveling around Malaysia, I would highly recommend stopping in Ipoh for a day or two. If for nothing else,
a visit to the cave temples makes it worthwhile.

Photo:
Ipoh, Malaysia. I got my ride around here. There is an overpass on the main road, right next to McDonalds and a market, and this is where I took this
photo from, on a very sunny day.